An Interview with “Fringe (Portugal)”

Meet Patrícia Santos, Petra de Abreu, and Francisca Magalhães, the managers of Fringe (Portugal) on Twitter and Facebook. They are diehard fans that have created an incredible community in Portugal. Someone check Walter’s lab notes for these girls’ names, because they must have received cortexiphan as kids. It is the only explanation for their Fringetastic abilities. Read the interview in Portuguese and English.

What is the Portuguese Fringe fandom like?

De modo a respondermos à questão, temos de basear-nos no trabalho desenvolvido em Fringe (Portugal) no Facebook e no Twitter.

In order to give you a real vision of who we are, we’ll base our answer on our work with Fringe (Portugal) on Facebook and Twitter.

As diehard Fringe fans, we wanted to create a place where we could all talk and share our thoughts about the perfection that Fringe is. We also wished, right from the start, to connect ourselves with every other Fringe fan-based platform available, aiming to create a very cohese fandom – we thought our show needed it, since it’s science fiction we’re talking about – not a very successful tv show genre in Portugal. With this in mind, it was decided in our little family of tv show addicted members that a Fringe portuguese fan page had to be created (just so you know, we began by covering less than 10 shows 3 years ago and now we’re covering more than 40!). We started slowly with very few fans, mainly people already used to the genre or simply fans of JJ Abrams’ work. We discussed whatever we could find about the show and the episodes, and now, we’ve been able to reach people that are having their first experiences with Sci-fi or even people who, quite simply, fell in love with the show [and] everything about the Fringe universe. Later on, and based on our own Fringedom personal experience (worldwide speaking), we decided to expand our work to Twitter. So, what is our fandom like? Just as mad, curious and passionate as any other Fringe fandom anywhere. Even though we know we are not as vocal (we’re still a small group, and we are european, and we live in Portugal where our devotion to tv shows is still small but growing…) as the main one, we happily support whatever campaign is created for the Fringedom and we’re pretty much as addicted as any other Fringie out there – and mind you we have to wait until Saturday to watch Fringe!!!

What is it about the Fringe universe that makes you such a devoted fan?

How is it possible to not like the Fringedom?! We honestly don’t think it’s possible at all. Not even JJ could make us imagine [that]. It all starts with Fringe, the tv show. Before Fringe, some of us already had sci-f iexperience, but even those of us can easily admit that Fringe took things to a whole new level. The show is perfect. The plot? Mind-blowing. The special effects and production (the sets, the light, the music, and the photography)? Freakin’ fantastic. The cast? Don’t make us start on that. And then you have the way the cast relates to the audience – every moment they show up somewhere and actually acknowledge the fandom, you can’t help this sense of happiness and pride and “IT’S MY CAST AND IT’S THE BEST!!!!” which basically makes you want to be a part of the Fringedom. We basically want Fringe to succeed [all the way to] its last chapter. There are a lot of fandoms out there, but even those shows with higher ratings and secured, predictable season renewals don’t have a fandom as passionate as ours – and they know it! We are changing, with every single episode, the way networks perceive its audiences: if they’re making TV for us, then we’re having a say in it. And that feels pretty awesome.

If the executives at Fox Broadcasting Company asked you how they could better engage the international fans of their TV shows, what would you say?

They should listen to the international fans, either by making sure the show’s producers arrange for a way to actually talk to them (like ours do through Twitter) or by visiting the main fan created websites (like ours acknowledge their existence). It would be pretty awesome if, in our case, the cast could come to Europe. It would gives us a whole [new] sense of belonging to this fandom by acknowledging us, a whole new way of experiencing Fringe and it would also mean a neat way for us to actually meet other fans.

This is easy: clap. We’ll clap > take a bow > cry our eyeballs out and get depressed > watch it all over again. First, our minds will be blown away by the finale and we will applaud JJ Abrams, Wyman, Pinkner and everybody else for being geniuses. Then, we will notice that their will no longer be Fringe Fridays or Fringe events on Twitter, GetGlue, Facebook and you name it. We will immediately panick and go through some grieving stages, thus crying and getting quite depressed and resenting other tv shows that are less intelligent but are still constantly renewed. We will ignore the other TV shows we follow, until the beautiful day when we accept that it is actually over and we remember something Walter said or did. We will stupidly grin and feel the urge to watch the show all over again.

If you could spend the day with one character from the show, who would it be and why? What would you do?

There’s three of us and of all the characters Fringe has, we all choose blue universe characters. We’d spent the day with Walter Bishop, Olivia Dunham and Peter Bishop. We would LOVE to hang out in the lab with Walter, under the supervision of Agent Astrid Farnsworth – she would also be necessary to make sure we didn’t ingest anything funny or that we didn’t create anything deadly. Or intoxicated Gene. Probably all of the above, for the matter. We’d love to spend time with Olivia Dunham for her badassery (can we say badassery?): catching some bad guys, jumping from roofs, doing stuff powered by cortexiphan – you name it, we’d do it. And Peter Bishop? We would like to know some of his con man tricks, and hear some of those stories and other stuff (we’re trying really hard not to make any girly girl comments here!!). Hum could we ask for Gene too? Oh! – and to see the Bridge too, pretty please??